Sometimes, your husband may become disgruntled and fed up with the married life; and when that happens, most likely he will be apathetic about you and your relationship as a whole. So he may show little interest in doing intimate things with you, such as holding hands with you, having sex with you, kissing you, cuddling you, and even greeting you, Maybe, you may feel like you can’t go on to live in the marriage without affection, and now you badly want to see a positive change in your relationship.
Here’re 7 tips on what to do when your husband is not affectionate towards you:
(1) Get out of the mundane routine:
Before figuring out why your husband is not affectionate to you, first, you need to ask yourself whether you are also bored or tired with yourself. If you follow a mundane routine day after day and are no longer interested in trying anything new, your married life no longer moves forward with enthusiasm and excitement, naturally, he may see you as uninteresting too; and that makes it difficult for him to get back the feeling that he ever experienced when he ever fell in love with you. The typical example is that many married women fall into a rut after they become mothers; to take the responsibility of a mother, many times they need to put their babies’ needs in front of their own; to some extent, the burden of caring babies may inevitably result in a loss of their sense of identity; when such a vastly disproportionate burden falls on wives, it is not easy for them to juggle two roles of wives and mothers in their marriages.
So if you feel as if the spark has gone in your relationship, it is time to rediscover yourself and find the part of yourself that may have lost. Especially if you admit that you are unsatisfied with yourself and that you are frustrated with where you go in your life, you should consider yourself for a change. For example, you may block off more time to stay with your husband in your daily life, and you may start to regularly date your husband again just like the first time you met him. After you step outside the box that you have been stuck in for a long time, you gain an opportunity of becoming more intriguing and interesting to your husband.
Again, the mundane routine way you lead your married life is very likely a culprit for his boredom in marriage.
(2) Dress well for your husband:
In your marriage, your husband always wishes that you can look nice for him. But ask yourself how long you have not dressed well for him? It is quite common for the majority of married women that they let themselves go after a few years of marriage. Although you may simply think it is unnecessary to smarten yourself up in front of your husband, he may take the neglect of your sloppy appearance as a sign that he is no longer attractive to you and hence you do not need to look good for him. And what is worse, if your husband thinks that you have become a slovenly dressed person, it is also possible that he may have such a negative thought – “If she is not willing to dress well for me, how can I expect her to devote herself to me?”
Therefore, when your husband is not affectionate towards you, you might put an effort into improving your appearance; and making a change in how you look is a practical way to change his impression on you. So, you might have your hair styled at the beauty parlor, go for a long-overdue facial, or regularly spend time on some weight loss workouts for good body shape.
Caring about your appearance is an easily unnoticed thing, but it matters to your husband. And it is not shallow to care how you look good; instead, it should be supported by legitimate reasons like below:
- Love starts from within. Therefore, before you love others, you need to love yourself.
- Dressing well for your husband means you care about what he thinks about you.
- Caring your appearance is a sign of self-respect.
(3) Reignite past positive memories:
There must be good times and bad times in your relationship. If your husband always dwells on past unpleasant things about you, it is possible that your husband will not be affectionate to you. If so, you should be aware that those past events are unchangeable; to make it through, you should lead him to think more of the good times you spent together so that he can become increasingly irrational instead of being overwhelmed by negative emotions. For example, you may remind him of the wedding anniversary, or other pleasant, memorable things he has ever done to you or you have ever done to him.
In addition, when your husband is not affectionate towards you, you do not have to force him to spend more time with you, instead, you might as well allow him to spend some time away from you; some alone time not just temporarily distracts his attention from you as well as controversial issues about you; by offering to give him more alone time, he is more likely to calm his mind and reflect upon how he treated you and how you treated him.
(4) Learn to be forgiving
The best times in any marital relationship should be the first few years of marriage. And then year by year, one or both spouses become less and less demonstrative of one’s affection to the other. Maybe, you have also realized that you are very tempted to argue with your husband even on a small matter, and I bet that you did not like to keep nagging on those small things during the early stage of marriage. So, actually those trivial arguments and fights could have been avoided; and compared to the early stage, your vision may have already become narrow and lack of forgiveness, and you may have become insensitive to your spouse’s emotional needs as well; so, it may be time to re-learn how to understand your spouse and forgive your spouse’s shortcomings and mistakes. Anytime, whatever a marital issue is, you can’t deal with it well if you don’t maintain a positive outlook on it.
(5) Seek changes within yourself:
In your marriage, you can not always control how your husband acts as much as you would like to.
More often than not, you may have already got accustomed to saying to him that you love him because of the thought of who he is. However, at the back of your mind, probably you just expect him/her to act as the person who you want for your purpose. And sooner or later, you will come to realize that it is almost impossible for your husband to perfectly meet your expectations, as the two of you get into more and more misunderstandings, arguments, and fights that hurt each other. But as long as you think hard about it, you have to admit that your spouse should have the right of being himself/herself; and put yourself in his/her shoes, you would also be resistant to the idea of being made over into a person that your husband just wants you to be.
Therefore, if you want a significant change in your relationship when your husband is not affectionate towards you, you should start with changing yourself instead of changing your man. So, you might take some time to figure out where you can improve yourself, and you might ask your husband how he wants you to be a better wife.
In a nutshell, improving yourself is a feasible way to fix the relationship with your man.
(6) Have open communication:
When your husband is not affectionate, there must be a scene that you are familiar with: you keep nagging him, but he is actually not listening (e.g. he deliberately looks away, crossing his arms); or both you and he are talking at cross-purposes and even shouting at each other. This scene can be prevented if you both have the patience to listen to each other and are willing to give each other enough time to express each other’s views.
Generally, compared with women, men are not so good at talking. So, if you are the one who usually talks much more during conversations with your husband, try to balance this out consciously by encouraging him to speak his mind. Beware, if you are the one who blathers on and on during your conversation, you may hardly hear what your man has to say to you. In such a situation, open, two-way communication is required to let the harmony flow back into your relationship.
To get more tips on how to have effective communication with your spouse, you might go on to read the post below:
How to have effective communication in marriage.
(7) Help him reduce stress:
As time goes by, the marriage inevitably brings your husband more and more stress (e.g. work stress, and parenting stress); especially after you have your kids. And in particular, financial stress is a common reason why a man feels bored with his marriage sometimes; if he is the primary household earner, he may feel bored in the marriage when he scarcely earns enough to keep himself and his family; more specifically, he gets more tired and bored with the married life than of you. And as a wife, you should seek ways to help him release stress. For example, your man may see sex as a form of stress relief, so you may fully engage in sex when he wants to make love to you; you may work harder to directly help him lessen the financial burden, or you may give him more space and time to relax.
For more tips on how to deal with stress in your marriage, you might go on to read the related posts below:
How to survive a stressful marriage – Deal with marital stress.
7 simple tips on how to deal with financial stress in a marriage.
When you successfully help him reduce his bad stress, his passion will have a better chance of burning again in the relationship.
The final word:
When you feel like there is no excitement or romance left for your marriage, don’t be too disappointed, there are many things you can try to do to get out of this frustration.
And when you see your husband as cold, distant, self-centered, his lack of affection may make you feel unloved, unimportant, ignored, and lonely. But probably he is not what you thought he was; although you have been married for years, you still have not known well how to connect his heart in a way that captures his love for a long time.
And if your man constantly keeps parts of himself out, withholds his emotions, affection, and thoughts, your marriage will be at risk. For more tips about what to do when your husband is not affectionate, you might go on to watch the video below to follow the comprehensive guidance that is offered by Brad Browning, a marriage coach with 12+ years of experience:
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What to do when your husband is bored with you – Rekindle your marriage.
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